April 17, 2024
It has become something of a common practice for authors in the midst of a massive fantasy epic to take time to write smaller, lower stakes novellas to bridge both gaps in the fictional world, as well as the gaps in time in the real world, as a 1000 page novel takes some time to put together. Edgedancer falls between books two and three of the Stormlight Archive, a projected ten novel epic by renowned fantasy boy Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is well known for the scale of his world-building and his attention to detail with regard to his created lore. In a paperback that clocks in at 2 inches thick and nearly two and a half pounds (this is pretty big for a book), that strength is able to shine through. In a 300 page novella with a single character perspective? Less so.
Sanderson is forced to spend his energy more singularly on character, and specifically voice. This book serves as an introduction to a character destined for more screen (page?) time, and it does a very good job in that role. Lyft is exciting, strange, and full of potential. However, the short form story puts Sanderson’s ability to write her under a microscope. As a result, some consistency issues are brought to the fore. Lyft, a (sort of) 13-year-old girl of very humble origin, mostly speaks as you might expect an uneducated, unrefined, impertinent, and aloof tween to speak. And sometimes she lands on a piece of wisdom beyond her years, often as a direct result of the hard life she has lived. Other times, unfortunately, she has lines of dialogue so removed from her mannerisms and experience it’s as though they belong to another character, completely divorced from the voice Sanderson has established for her. These lapses are not quite common, and do improve as the book goes on, but they occur too frequently to have escaped my notice.
Edgedancer is probably not for people who have not read the first two Stormlight Archive novels. The plot is fairly self-contained, works well as a stand-alone vignette, but it interacts too heavily with the pre-established lore that Sanderson has written. Until you know what a shardblade is, or who the Alethi are, there are going to be too many holes in this story. The novella functions very well as a palate cleanser between books, stoking the appetite during the long wait between meals. That said, the lorecraft present in even the small details of this side-story is, as always, fantastic. There are few authors building as well as Sanderson today, and it’s always a joy to unravel more of the pieces of his world. He seems to always know what’s happening in every corner of this massive fantasy-scape, despite the sheer volume of information attendant to such a large work.
(Comparably) short, exciting, and not a little insightful, Edgedancer is a nice change of pace in this ongoing series, and a welcome, if a bit awkward, departure for the author. Brandon Sanderson is an expert at his craft, and, even in a slightly different medium, that skill shows through, even where there are some missteps.
7/10
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